One of America's most iconic images, ''Whistler's Mother,'' seldom leaves its home at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, but has recently arrived at the Detroit Institute of Arts as part of an exhibition of major American artists. ''American Attitude:...

April 4, 2004, Sunday

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) understood the power of fashion. Extravagant by nature, notorious for parading around Europe with his trademark monocle, cane and fur coat accessorized by a pair of ''chrysanthemum-colored gloves,'' he cultivated...

HIGHLIGHTS ANNALS OF CENSORSHIP: OTHER TIMES -- Banned in Britain when released in 1967, ''The Trip,'' a drug film written by Jack Nicholson and directed by Roger Corman, was approved yesterday by British censors for release. Starring Peter Fonda...

WHILE ''Whistler, Women and Fashion,'' a new exhibit at the Frick Collection, explores the central role of clothes in 19th-century portraiture, the most interesting -- and scandalous -- dress in the history of American art can be found 12 blocks...

A dandy, a wit and a social butterfly who actively cultivated his image as a star aesthete, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) had a lifelong interest in fashion and women's clothes. He obsessed over what his sitters wore, and for one of his most...

April 25, 2003, Friday

HIGHLIGHTS GERMANY: HITLER'S FINAL DAYS -- The last days of Hitler, leading to his suicide in his Berlin bunker as the Third Reich collapsed around him in 1945, will be the focus of a new film by the German producer Bernd Eichinger. In Munich, Mr....

The subject of fashion during wartime raises touchy questions about whether it's relevant to discuss what people are wearing when others are dying. The Oscars this year stressed the A-word (appropriateness) while offering little evidence that its...

HIGHLIGHTS MOSTLY, BUT NOT ENTIRELY, YOU-KNOW-WHO -- The 37th season of the Mostly Mozart Festival, with 33 performances over five weeks, will run this year from July 25 to Aug. 23 under its new music director, the 42-year-old French conductor...

Winter Harvest In the very cold winter of 1880, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) found himself in Venice. He did not intend to stay longer than necessary to complete a commission for 12 etchings, but he fell in love with the city. He...

At First Sight Toward the end of the 19th century, modern art came to London in the works of two Americans and a Briton. Their names, respectively, were James Abbott McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent and Philip Wilson Steer. On Friday, 38 of...